


Katherine's Wheel

by irisbleufic



Category: Oxford Time Travel Universe - Connie Willis
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Doomsday Book, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-10-09
Updated: 2007-10-09
Packaged: 2017-11-10 12:57:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/466545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irisbleufic/pseuds/irisbleufic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Behind every ending, there's a what-if: the path not taken.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Katherine's Wheel

_Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned._

_I have not parted these pages for comfort or counsel in nearly nine years' time. Although I have been blessed as very few souls have been in the wake of our great tribulation, I have been slow to remember my duties in prayer._

_Let it be known, then, for those who have ears to hear, that in the Year of Our Lord thirteen hundred and fifty-six, upon the eve of Christ's birth, I have recalled my purpose, having been given no choice but survival, and resume this record where others before me have left it._

 

* * *

 

Mornings are frigid this time of year, wont to arrive clad in the faintest silver frost. From her vantage point at the second-storey window above the courtyard, Emma can see her mother's slight shape busy at spreading the last night's crumbled ashes across the icy stones.

Flexing her cold fingers, Emma fumbles at her inkpot, which is frozen solid, and tries to thaw just enough of the contents—water mixed with more of the same ash—to cover the tip of her reed pen, which is in some need of trimming.

A glance about the desk tells her that someone has borrowed her favorite knife.

 _Emmay_ , she writes in one corner of her much-abused scrap of parchment, for that is her name as she understands it when she combines Roman letters with what her ears tell her. Much later, by firelight, when they have returned from Mass and the baby is asleep and her father has gone to tend their tiny stable, her mother will lean over her shoulder, frown at the parchment and write beneath Emma's efforts: _Aimee_. "For you are a miracle, and well beloved," she will say.

Be that as it may, Emma has little patience for French.

 

* * *

 

_I have made hard journeys in my short life, yet I must not suppose that my journeys have not been kinder than those undertaken by the souls that have passed on before me. In the time of the plague, many lost their lives, and for them I had little time to weep. For in that time, those dark hours before dawn, my husband lay grievously afflicted with the fever in a place of such poor refuge I could scarcely offer him warmth. How many days he fought me in his sickness, I cannot tell, but it seemed to me as the world's blackest hour come again._

_I would like to tell you that it was on the third day that he had regained enough strength to stand, but the truth is that I was so weary with six days' vigil over him that he was the one to at last carry me into daylight, scarcely able to stand up himself._

 

* * *

 

Alan runs the palm of his hand down the stretch of an ash branch that he has just stripped of its bark, checking for splinters. Satisfied with its smoothness, he sets the knife's fine blade to the last remaining side and begins to remove the last patch of bark in long, even strokes.

Not far away, on the rush-covered floor, his youngest child sits playing with a tiny wooden cart that he had crafted long ago when his hands were somewhat surer and his arms free of scars, which pained him for a very long while.

The cart has been broken and repaired many times: wheels completely remade, miniature beasts of burden added.

The toddler smiles and wobbles to her feet, one turn-shoe half off and her cap-laces dangling. "Da, the _horse_ ," she says with childish displeasure, displaying the toy's most recent damage by offering Alan the cart with one hand and its animal companion with the other.

" _Ass_ ," he corrects her, setting his work aside. His patron does not expect the chairs for weeks yet, and the toy will be easy to fix.

 

* * *

 

 _If I thought that a book of hours might calm my grief or that confession to a priest might ease my sorrow, I would gladly have sought those things. My time, so short as it is, grows shorter still by the day. The births of my daughters were not easy labors for my body to undertake; I have nearly twice left my husband devastated with loss. There are days when the loss we have since taken by choice weighs more heavily upon us still. I must be so very, very brief. My time is short, and the church will not be empty for long._

 

* * *

 

Katherine has not slept soundly for many years, but she has come to welcome the solitude that accompanies the endless hours before the sunrise that will herald Christmas Day. Cautiously, she disentangles herself from her husband's heavy embrace and draws a crumpled blanket from the foot of the bed, wrapping herself quickly to stave off eager gooseflesh.

Across the room on a low pallet, her daughters sleep peacefully, Emma with her back pointedly turned toward her younger sister.

Without a sound, Katherine turns away from them and slides into the desk-seat before the window. She lays her palms flat against the wood, comforted to know that her husband's work will never leave Emma's deft fingers or delicate wrists splintered.

She shivers, then, her eyes closed as the blanket slips to the floor and she lifts her hands. She presses them palm to palm, lips to wrists, as the blanket stirs again, this time with a tug.

"Mama!" starts the whisper. "Will you tell Mary's babe that Da fixed my cart? He can play with it if he wants. I took it to church so—"

"Shhh, Rosemund," says Katherine, and pulls both her daughter and the blanket into her lap to await the coming dawn.

 

* * *

 

 _The truth is that I have not opened this book in nine years because I fear that it may be long finished. I do not know who may yet hear my voice in the void, or who may yet hear the voice of the girl who began this. She has left me an uneasy task, for who can hope to fill a book past the point of its ending? As I speak them, I fear that these words will be her last. And though my hands tremble as I close this account, even as I have walked through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I know that I shall yet live a while as surely as I may one day live again._

_Exaudi orationem meam et clamor meus ad te veniat, Mr. Dunworthy. Amen._


End file.
